Davos Shows Army Ready for Worst in War Game Operation

An armed police officer stands on the snow-covered rooftop of the Hotel Davos and looks out over the Congress Center, the venue for the World Economic Forum in Davos. Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg

As snipers fan out over the rooftops of the Alpine resort
and the Swiss army rolls miles of barbed wire through the town,
officers have more than the security of Mario Draghi and Lloyd
Blankfein in mind. They are also preparing for a worst-case
scenario: European chaos sparked by a collapse of the euro.

At their annual exercise in September, the Swiss army
drilled for a conflict between two fictitious neighboring states
in crisis. The challenge was figuring out how to turn
Switzerland into a fortress that could keep out the flood of
refugees a conflict would send its way.

“Rising nationalism in Europe is a trend that needs to be
monitored,” Major-General Jean-Marc Halter, 54, Switzerland’s
second-highest ranking officer who took charge of the war game
and is overseeing security at Davos, said in an interview at his
headquarters in the Swiss capital, Bern. “It’s the army’s job
to protect the country against all possible security threats.”

While Switzerland hasn’t seen conflict since the Sonderbund
civil war of 1847, Davos has provided a chance to demonstrate
military readiness ever since former Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat attended the forum in 1985. About 3,300 troops will
protect government heads this year, including Britain’s David
Cameron and Italy’s Mario Monti, and secure the airspace in a 46
kilometer (28 miles) radius around the Alpine village.

Biggest Operation

The five-day event, which starts today, is the single
biggest operation executed by the Swiss army this year.

“In Davos we gain insight into the effectiveness of our
training, procedures and chain of command,” said Halter, adding
that instability on Europe’s periphery is “a scenario that
needs to be thought through.”

Switzerland is right not to be complacent, said James
Galbraith, a professor of government and business relations at
the University of Texas, who warns of a potential “explosion of
violence” on the continent.

“Europe is still heading toward a social and human
crisis,” he said in a Jan. 11 interview. “In Greece, there’s
already a breakdown of public order. You have the rise of an
essentially fascist organization that’s harassing immigrants.”

Yugoslav Warning

If Spain, which is plagued by regional divisions, leaves
the euro, the country could break apart, said Galbraith, who
last year published a book titled ‘Inequality and Instability: A
Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis.’

“These things have the potential to escalate very rapidly,
which is what we saw in Yugoslavia,” where a series of wars
killed more than 120,000 people after the state disintegrated in
1991, Galbraith said. “When I speak of Yugoslavia, it’s to
remind people that advanced societies have the potential for
advanced levels of violence.”

On Jan. 14, a gunman fired at Greek Prime Minister Antonis
Samaras’s office at his party’s Athens headquarters following a
spate of fire-bombings around the capital. Rioters last February
set fire to a number of buildings housing a Starbucks Corp.
café, a bank and a movie theater in the Greek capital. The
Italian government said last May it would step up the use of
armed forces to safeguard more than 14,000 “sensitive” sites
across the country in the face of increasing violence.

Potential Violence

More than 10 miles of barbed wire help deter most attacks
on Davos and thwart the attentions of anti-globalization
activists, who in 2000 broke a window at a McDonald’s,
vandalized several cars and burned a U.S. flag. Still, “there
is a certain potential for violence that can’t be ignored,”
said Halter.

“Revolutionary Perspective,” a violent political group,
claimed responsibility on an Italian activist website for an
explosion that shattered windows in Davos’s four-star Posthotel
Morosani in 2011. Last year, the Swiss air force intercepted 14
light civilian aircraft pilots unaware of the no-fly zone around
the ski resort.

The risk that civil unrest in Europe would trigger a wave
of refugees into Switzerland is nevertheless slim, said Anand
Menon, an associate fellow at Chatham House in London and
professor of west European politics at the University of
Birmingham. Wide-scale migration requires “something
cataclysmic,” said Menon, who sees Islamic terrorism as a
bigger threat, especially since France’s intervention in Mali.

Security Threat

“Greece, to a significant extent, is no longer self-governing and that will cause problems there,” said Menon.
“But I don’t think it represents a security threat to other
countries, certainly not as far afield as Switzerland.”

In September’s 16-day exercise, codenamed Stabilo Due, a
European crisis triggered a clash between two fictitious states,
Elbonia and Danubia. The conflict sent a wave of refugees
towards Helvetia, the name of the allegorical female warrior
found on Switzerland’s postage stamps and coins, prompting
deployments of planes and tanks by the Swiss military.

The Swiss army declined to comment on the number of
refugees they envisaged.

“These exercises in the field are indispensable,”
Brigadier Rene Wellinger, commander of the 29th tank battalion,
said in an interview posted on the Swiss army’s website.
“Shooting ranges and simulators don’t present these types of
leadership problem.”

The role of the army at Davos is questioned by some
lawmakers as providing security for the forum runs up an 8
million-franc ($8.6 million) bill for Swiss taxpayers.

Hitler’s Plans

“The army should be used when Switzerland is threatened by
a foreign power,” said Geri Mueller, a lawmaker for the Swiss
Greens. “It has no business being there.”

While 170 Swiss soldiers on night maneuvers accidentally
invaded neighboring Liechtenstein almost six years ago,
Switzerland itself was last occupied in 1798 by French troops
under the command of Napoleon.

Adolf Hitler, who called the Alpine country “a pimple on
the face of Europe,” drew up a plan called Operation Christmas
Tree to subjugate the country, though concerns that a campaign
against Switzerland would occupy as many as half a million
troops may have been the reason it was never carried out.

Switzerland’s neutrality laws, which stem from the Treaty
of Paris that followed Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815,
ban the military from fighting abroad other than in peacekeeping
missions. Swiss have served as mercenaries in European armies
since the Middle Ages, and they still provide the papal guard in
Vatican City.

Budget Pressure

Both Davos and the European conflict scenario may help
Swiss Defense Minister Ueli Maurer make the case for boosting
the nation’s defense spending of almost 4 billion francs.

“We have had an almost freefall in the budget for 20
years,” said Maurer. “I just hope that the budgetary pressures
will lead to more efficiency, cutting fat but not the muscles.”
The Swiss spent 6.3% of total government outlays on defense in
2010. That’s higher than any country in the EU that year.

Still, while the potential for the euro to collapse
shouldn’t be taken lightly, Switzerland doesn’t have much to
fear, according to Galbraith of Texas University.

“The prospect of a few Greek refugees turning up in
Switzerland shouldn’t be particularly alarming,” he said.
“Some of the unsavory characters descending on Davos strike me
as capable of far more damage.”